Friday, November 6, 2009

A New Math Game

Little Bit is working her way through the Math U See Primer book. We haven't gotten very far past the lesson when they are supposed to learn what numeral the blocks stand for. She had no problem naming the blocks the first day and never forgot what she named them, but she wasn't having as much luck remembering the numeral they corresponded to. She's also been having trouble recognizing several numerals. She knows ALL the letters of the alphabet in both upper and lowercase, but for some reason numbers just weren't sticking.

So, last week we made a book. Here are the first few pages. She named the green unit block "green grass", the 2 block "duck feet", the 3 block, "three little pigs", and the 4 block "sunshine."

Then yesterday I got an idea from Math U See's Facebook page and a new game was born. Actually 2 new games were born.

I found some dice (I refuse to call them die, ok? Hate that word. I know it's correct but, ug.) and realized that Little Bit wouldn't be able to easily recognize what number she had rolled. Also, a dice would only allow her to practice her Math U See blocks up to 6. And she knows those lower numbers pretty well.

Then I enlisted Sweetheart to quickly add the dice (she can use the practice in adding QUICKLY) and call out the number to Little Bit, who then had to locate the correct block. They had a lot of fun doing this and taking turns shaking the dice.

Concentrate, Sweetheart!!! Yeah!!! She finally learned 9!!!!

When Sweetheart had enough of that game, Little Bit wanted to play some more. She and I got in the floor and made up a new game. I rolled the dice and called out the number to her and we attached them to a hundreds block base as we went. This has the potential for good things further down the road as she will figure out that if she already put a 4 block down, she'll need a 6 block to complete that row (4+6=10). Towards the end, she was figuring out what she needed to roll to finish the whole block and beginning to recognize the dice patterns.I need to roll a 2 and a 1 Mom!

We decided when we were finished that next time we will add one thing to our game. Whenever anyone rolls an 8, we shall eat an M&M. (Chocol-8!) It's a win-win game.